“Open, world, your trembling petals slowly,
Here one, there one, natal to its hour....”
and in the midst of that motley throng, Peter, looking down, saw the poet whom he had left on the hill-top, now wandering alone and singing his message to his lute.
“Oh, the king! Oh, my king!” cried little Peter, as if he had had a great wound.
“What now, my little trumpeter?” asked the carnival king.
“Not you—not you!” cried Peter. “Oh, set me down,—set me down. Oh, what have I done?”
“How now, little Trumpet?” cried the carnival king. But Peter, instead of stretching out his little body, slim and trumpet-graceful, turned and fell at the king’s feet in the car and slipped from his grasp and scrambled through the branching green and reached the street.
There, in the wonder and then the mockery of the people, he began struggling to free himself from the ruffles of cloth-of-gold about his body. Some laughed, some ran from him as if he were mad, and some, wishing for themselves the golden ruffles, helped him to pull them off and to strip down the clinging golden stocking that bound his limbs. And then, being close to the city gates, little Peter ran, all naked as he was, without the gates and on to the empty road. And he ran sobbing out his heart:—
“Oh, my king! I would have told them that the world is beginning—but, instead I have told them only to get them husks!”
Now the poet, who had seen it all—and who understood—ceased his song and made his way as quickly as might be for the press of the people, and ran after Peter, and fared along the road beside him, trying to comfort him. But the little lad might not be comforted, and he only cried out again:—